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The Accountability Roundtable in 2010 made a submission to the Queensland government's public hearings on efforts to tighten donations and lobbying in the state.

The organisation's members includes the former clerk of the federal senate, Harry Evans, and former Democrats senator Lyn Allison.

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The group told Queensland government public hearings that political donations should be made public within 24 hours.

"The recipient or the recipient's agent should be required to disclose any donation or commitment over $200 and its original source and do so within 24 hours of the making of the donation," the group said.

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"Electronic lodgement of the information and verification of it should be mandatory and facilitated."

The group's submission to the Bligh's Government's 2009 discussion paper to tighten political donations and lobbying in Queensland was raised yesterday by Mt Coot-tha Greens candidate, Adam Stone.

Mr Stone said it was time that political donations were made public, faster.

"Here is a group that had made it their business to scrutinise these things sand they are saying that timeframe is realistic for electronic notification," Mr Stone said.

"And I can't really see any reason why it shouldn't be, given the possibility of online disclosure."

Mr Stone said the advances in online technology since 2009 made it even more relevant in 2012.

"It should be able to be disclosed within 24 or 48 hours," he said.

"The group made the point that these long time frames for disclosing political donations are kind of a throw back to the past when it wasn't so easy to make this kind of information publicly available very quickly.

"But that doesn't apply now. You could have an online facility to notify the public about a donation very quickly. There is certainly no reason that it needs to take six months."

Electoral law expert Graeme Orr, from University of Queensland, said it was time that larger political donations were made public within 48 hours.

"Sure, with receipts issued through the Electoral Commission and you would put the emphasis on the parties and the candidates themselves," he said.

Professor Orr said there should also be automatic disclosure when regular donations were more than $10,000.

"Once a particular donor has gone over the $10,000 for that period, there should be immediate disclosure to stop people just donating a $1000 a month or that kind of thing," he said.

However Professor Orr said the level of disclosure should not be set too low, so that average Queenslanders became embarrassed to make donations.

In Queensland, donations have to be declared to the Electoral Commission every six months - or no later than 15 weeks after an election - and donations more than $100,000 had to be declared within 14 days.

Mr Stone said it was wrong the public did not know about political donations until after the election.

"An election in particular is when we are all trying to work out the credibility and fitness of people vying for our vote," he said.

This week questions about publicly-declared political donations being made to Mr Newman from developers in 2011.

The Australian newspaper reported yesterday that developer Phillip Usher, through different companies, made seven donations in 2011 totalling $72,000 to the LNP's publicly accessible council campaign fund, Forward Brisbane Leadership.

The Electoral Commission of Queensland website shows the developer also made three donations to the ALP; $3000 on July 23, 2010; $2750 on May 25, 2011; and $2000 on May 31, 2011.